Steve Wariner - Lynda

Flabbergasted I begin this entry. I had ideas about what the blog itself meant to me but it was about records that touched me in some way. So I went back to my early days growing up in the West Texas oil country and I remembered the radio which was always on in our house. I grew up well and in 1984 we had a house with an intercom system which was cool at the time but quickly lost popularity. That aside, I remember a great deal of the country music which poured through. After the Eagles' contribution to country which glitzed it up a bit, country music was looking for a direction in the early 1980s which inevitably lead to the Nashville disco which we've come to hate. Underground and alt-country acts kept the flame alive, but America had its attention diverted and "superstars" came to power in the genre.
This track is hardly blameless. I won't defend the electric drums and the other 80s studio tricks they used but I will say the strength of the composition overrides the trickery. There is something about a Steve Wariner song that is hard to explain. If you aren't Southern, I can't really expect you to understand this but it has a beauty all its own that people with a taste for such a thing can appreciate.
Next time, something beaty, funky or rocky.

Tom Waits- Bone Machine

Ok, this time I am nominating an entire album. It is all just too good to choose one song. This album beat out Nirvana Nevermind to get the Alternative Album of the Year Award in 1992. Ack, but what is alternative?
Tom Waits is just a damn good musician. He plays everything and sings everything from lounge jazz, to gospel, to blues to avant-spooky rock. His style is unique. No one can compare. And this album is one of his best. Perhaps I think that just because this is the first Tom Waits album I ever owned. But I have listened to many and this one seems to me to be the most cohesive, and it was probably the most commerically accessible release he ever made. Which is another good thing about Tom. You can choose an album (and he has made tons) depending on your mood. It's like choosing fine wines to go with dinner. Mr Waits will never let you down. And he is also a little bit of an actor. He was in Mystery Men as the junkyard owner and he starred in one (or more?) of Jim Jarmusch's films.
If you want tracks, then I recommend "Murder in the Red Barn," "Earth Died Screaming," "In the Colloseum"

ZZ Top - Rough Boy

A classic '80s tune. Beautiful in its own perverse way. A sound of the times which doesn't really stand up for its own merit but the legend of ZZ Top lives
The solo is classic Billy Gibbons pinch harmonics over brilliantly absurd synth atmospherics. It could be dismissed as an atypical ZZ Top song, but their '80s output is not so easy to cast aside. A great track. Afterburner really is a good album, kitsch factor aside.